


Last Note, First Day

by MaiaRL



Category: Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry
Genre: Anxiety, Body Dysphoria, Corpse Kicking (He Deserves It), Implied/Referenced Incest, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, saku spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24425674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaiaRL/pseuds/MaiaRL
Summary: Fill for Banned Together Bingo 2020: Spiritual PollutionSpoilers for Umineko and specifically Last Note of the Golden Witch.Sayo Yasuda has a hard time on her first day at public high school.
Relationships: Ushiromiya Battler/Yasuda Sayo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Last Note, First Day

Gaining admittance to transfer to the school hadn’t been hard for Sayo Yasuda, even with her unique situation. Paperwork and bureaucracy disappeared like a cloud of butterflies before the golden magic that was her share of the Ushiromiya family fortune. There had been some confusion over her request for both kinds of uniform, but money can often buy a sort of tolerance. She had insisted on taking the entrance examination, even if she could have easily bribed her way past that as well. Her grades at the Fukuin House had always been good and she wanted to prove she deserved to be there. To have this life.

Yes, gaining permission to enter had been the easy part. A far more difficult task still stood in front of her.

The school rose up in front of her like the ancient tower built to heaven that God had struck down in wrath at humanity’s hubris. The anti-magic toxin hung thick about the building. She could feel it searing her skin as she approached, threatening to burn away the facade of confidence she had conjured for herself. Her steps faltered, and her hands clutched at her bag until her knuckles had turned bone white. She couldn’t go any closer, she could barely even breathe.

Other students walked past her and casually plunged into the invisible seething mist. It wouldn’t harm them. They were human… unlike her. The toxin would expose her for the wretched creature she truly was. Yasu. Disgusting, pathetic, weak Yasu. They were furniture, and humans could never accept furniture as one of them. Humans hated and disbelieved in anything they could not understand, and that malice gave birth to the deadly anti-magic toxin. The hearts of children who had lost the purity of youth could bring forth the most potent and concentrated venom. 

Even now the toxin had begun to corrode away at the illusion of humanity they had cloaked themself in. Students were starting to take notice as they passed by them and entered the towering edifice. Curious stares and hushed whispers followed by poorly hidden giggles pierced them like sharpened stakes. 

She could have hidden behind the demure smile of Shannon. He could have scorned them with the icy gaze of Kanon. Perhaps afterwards inexplicable tricks and pranks would befall them, courtesy of the witch Beatrice. It was too late now, though. The toxin was already inside them and they could no longer call one of them forth. Now there was only the furniture that had been mockingly named Yasu. Helpless. Wretched. Worthless. A twisted parody of human form with a broken body that could not love.

They never should have come here. They didn’t deserve this. They should have stayed on the island. They needed to run they needed to scream they needed tofightthisnotheyneededtospillthecursedbloodtheyneededtoDIE-

“Hey, Sayo! Let’s get going!”

Battler’s voice cut through the fog of self loathing. The toxic cloud that had polluted her soul and stripped away her identity lifted, and the jeering whispers of her peers returned to being harmless chatter among friends.

She ran to the source of the voice and leaned, clutching the arm that seemed to perpetually be stuck in his pocket. He laughed, scratching the side of his head in that way he always did when she caught him off-guard, and asked her if she was okay. She nodded, and tried her best to smile. Maybe he couldn’t feel her shaking.

She wasn’t okay, not really. He knew that just as well as her. The toxin that tormented her wasn’t a product of the people around her, it was buried deep in her own mind. Sometimes it felt like the world she lived in was just a fantasy. Sometimes she believed she was actually still on Rokkenjima, and Battler never returned to rescue her. Trapped in hell for a thousand years.

That wasn’t the truth though. He had come back for her. She remembered teasing him about the fact that he hadn’t show up on an actual white horse. She wasn’t even sure how he would have gotten a horse to the island, though she wouldn’t have put it past Battler Ushiromiya. Eventually she even explained her other selves, Kanon and the witch Beatrice. He had understood and accepted them just as easily as he accepted her. They were happy together, for awhile. 

That all changed the day Battler’s mother helped the two of them find Kinzo’s gold. When Genji explained the horrible truth of who she was over the corpse of the Ushiromiya patriarch. The corpse of her father. Her grandfather.

She had thought that it was the end. That no one could possibly continue to love something so twisted and wrong. A shattered body that was no longer man or woman. Filth and poison ran through their veins, a vile sludge that tainted her to her very soul. Surely, Battler was looking at her with scorn and disgust.

Instead, Battler kicked Kinzo’s corpse. Then he turned and held out a hand to her, a dumb cocky smile on his face despite the fact that his eyes were streaming with tears.

“Hey, Sayo. Let’s get going.” 

Sayo had been stained by the trauma of her past, and that toxic residue might never fully leave her. If it wasn’t for Battler and Lady Asumu, she would have been consumed by it. She didn’t know what her relationship with him was anymore, and he didn’t either. All she knew was that he had sworn to take her away and he had kept his promise.

There wasn’t anyone she would rather have beside her on her first day of school.


End file.
